The examination of the internal frontiers between ancient Maya polities is a topic that has received little focused attention. This article explores various topics associated with frontiers and frontier communities, including: (1) how they might be located archaeologically; (2) what their material correlates might be; and, (3) what we might expect in terms of their sociopolitical characteristics. Special attention is paid to the role that collective memory plays in both the definition and reaffirmation of territorial limits and in the production and reproduction of frontier identities. The ancient Maya center of Minanha is used as a case study.

Interaction between the Gulf Coast Olmecs and various regions of Early Formative Mesoamerica remains debated and poorly understood. In Oaxaca, models have been dominated by neoevolutionary epistemology; interaction between the Valley of Oaxaca and San Lorenzo has been characterized by emulation or peer polity models. Data from the Valley of Oaxaca, the Nochixtlán Valley, and the Gulf Coast demonstrate that San Lorenzo was at a different level of sociopolitical complexity than its contemporaries. Previous comparisons between Olmec-style pottery in the Gulf Coast and Valley of Oaxaca are found to be problematic, and have led to the impression that Oaxaca villagers produced more of this pottery than did the Olmecs. Neutron activation analysis demonstrates the Gulf Coast Olmecs exported ceramics to Mixtecs and Zapotecs in Oaxaca, while receiving few if any pots in return, suggesting that new models and theoretical perspectives must be applied to understanding the relationships between Oaxacan chiefdoms and the nascent Olmec state at San Lorenzo. An agency perspective explores what Mixtec, Zapotec, and Olmec groups may have taken from these interactions and relationships and acknowledges both local and Gulf Coast understandings of “Olmec.” Such relationships may be characterized more by acquisition between regions, with San Lorenzo as a superordinate center.

This article explores social memory and history as they pertain particularly to secondary political centers on the edges of the Classic Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. Over the course of the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900) the rulers of Maya polities in the Usumacinta River basin increasingly relied on the subordinate lords who governed these secondary centers to patrol and control the boundaries of their territories. For the rulers of any state, formulating an appropriate and coherent history to guide social memory is a critical political act for maintaining the cohesion of the political community. But as the Classic period progressed, client lords were increasingly permitted a formerly royal prerogative; they were accorded their own inscribed monuments. The monuments, together with associated ritual performances, were an integral part of the construction of history and collective memory in local communities and allowed secondary nobles to restructure social memory for their own interests. This trend, in turn, increased the potential for royal history and authority to be contested throughout the kingdom. Through several case studies this paper examines the ways that subordinate nobles could contest social memory and history sanctioned by primary rulers and the ways in which kings acted to maintain the reins of history and memory.

Barrio Tepalcate, on the Los Perros River just outside Ciudad Ixtepec, Oaxaca, 18 km upriver from Laguna Zope, is one of the few Early and Middle Formative period sites known in the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec region. Our salvage excavation in 2005 showed that the village covered no more than four hectares. It was probably one of several villages along the river in a two-tiered settlement hierarchy centered on Laguna Zope. The presence of Early Formative period ceramics suggests that the inhabitants of Barrio Tepalcate participated in the Early Olmec style horizon, although the design motifs on their pottery are simpler than those from San Lorenzo 150 km to the north. We found little evidence of imported ceramics from San Lorenzo, which may be due to the small size of the sample and the site, or to differences in how San Lorenzo interacted with highland sites, such as Etlatongo and San José Mogote, and Isthmian sites, such as Barrio Tepalcate. The Early Formative inhabitants of the southern Isthmus were members of the Mixe-Zoque language family, and specifically Mixe speakers by the Late Formative.

This paper utilizes anthropological and sociological approaches to social memory to analyze the position and relevance of sacred sites among the Jakaltek Maya of the western highlands of Guatemala. Based on archaeological investigations and oral history, the connection between the past and present is analyzed in terms of collective memory, underscoring the importance of specific places and landscape in remembering as well as in reinforcing Jakaltek identity and history. Three distinct sacred sites are discussed, including their archaeological evidence; position (or lack of) in histories; disposition/creation as sacred site; and ties to the community's social memory. Sacred sites and social memory are viewed as a key component of indigenous activism and identity politics as well as an integral aspect to understanding the social context of archaeology in the Guatemalan Maya Highlands.

Portable “Olmec-style” objects appeared in several regions of Mesoamerica near the end of the second millennium b.c., most frequently in the form of ceramic figurines and carved-incised pottery vessels. The origins of this early Olmec style and significance of its distribution are vigorously debated, with the role of the Gulf Coast Olmec archaeological culture and its largest center, San Lorenzo, especially controversial with respect to both issues. While recent chemical compositional analyses show that Olmec-style pots were exported from the Gulf Coast to several other regions of Mesoamerica, in each place beyond the Gulf Coast they are vastly outnumbered by locally-made versions that may or may not be faithful to Gulf Olmec stylistic canons based on vessel forms, technical style of manufacture, and design criteria. The extent of stylistic conformity between pots made in the Gulf Coast and distant regions has direct implications in terms of the geographic origin, apprenticeship, and cultural membership (innate ethnicity) of the potters who made the vessels. I consider these issues by comparing the designs and forms of excised (Calzadas Carved) pottery made at San Lorenzo and Cantón Corralito, a possible settlement enclave of Gulf Olmec peoples located in the Mazatan zone of Pacific Coastal Chiapas some 450 km from San Lorenzo.

Practices and features that many researchers have identified as “Olmec,” even when found outside of the Gulf Coast of Mexico, supposed by some to be the heartland of an Olmec culture, are often a minority within local assemblages with vast differences in style and form. This is the case in Honduras, where objects identified as “Olmec” were clearly locally made. Thus they cannot be explained simply in terms of the import to Honduras of “Olmec” objects made elsewhere. This paper seeks to address the question, “what did it mean to the inhabitants of Formative period Mesoamerican villages to make and use objects whose stylistic features made them stand out as different from others in their own communities?” Drawing on data from original fieldwork at multiple sites in Honduras and reanalysis of museum collections, this paper proposes a model for understanding this phenomenon rooted in social theories of materiality, the phenomenological experience of personhood, and the creation of identity through entanglement with things.

This brief essay argues that studying the non-Spanish inhabitants of Yucatan's past requires bridging the social distance generated by differences of time and culture and that the specific nature of that distance must first be understood. With respect to the Mayas, their mystique in the modern popular and academic imaginations is as much the creation of Maya elites in ancient and colonial times as it is the product of archaeologists and historians. To demystify the Maya, we must engage mundane as well as exotic sources and be aware of the obfuscating influence of those who interpreted Maya culture before us. A complete picture of colonial Yucatan and of the colonial Mayas must include Afro-Yucatecans, or Africans and their descendents in the peninsula. Rendered invisible by historical processes and lack of scholarly attention, Afro-Yucatecans must be fully examined if we are to fully grasp the Yucatec experience, including the Yucatec Maya experience.

The critical role of social or collective memory in ongoing processes of societal reproduction and transformation is well acknowledged by anthropologists and is being increasingly modeled in archaeological interpretations as well. Investigating how social memory impacted the materialities and historical trajectories of the Maya civilization has great potential for advancing archaeological methodologies as well as enlarging our knowledge of the Maya. In addition to the wealth of epigraphic, ethnographic, and early historical information available for the Maya, archaeologists are examining enduring architecture, representative imagery, and even mundane artifacts that constitute a “technology of memory” for clues to the interplay of recollection and forgetting in the operation and transformation of Maya societies. This commentary reviews issues and problems in archaeological studies of social memory and addresses the specific prospects for investigating social memory among the pre-Hispanic Maya, drawing upon the analyses provided by the papers in this special section.